Branch Out: 20 Organic Tree Houses Are Naturally Amazing

31Dec

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Woven huts made of living saplings, artistic hotel rooms resembling bird nests and cabins dangling from 300-year-old spruces are among the stunning organic structures built from, in, and onto entire trees. Tree houses like these 20 incredible structures indulge our childlike impulses to climb and view the world from a bird’s point of view, and blur the lines between nature and human habitation.

5 Bent-Wood Tree Houses by Romero Architecture

Romero Studios creates incredible organic tree-lofted structures including huts, homes, porches and platforms, some with a very rustic look and others more finished. Natural branches are often used, some still covered in lichen, enabling these magical forest getaways to blend into their environments.

Living Trees Shaped into Buildings by Patrick Dougherty

Patrick Dougherty gently shapes flexible saplings to form swirling structures that look as if they could have been painted with an artist’s brush. The saplings grow into each other as directed by Dougherty’s hand, making them stronger than they would have been had he simply woven thin branches together to form the huts. Some of Dougherty’s structures look like complex tree trunks, as if they might have been formed by nature, while others resemble cathedrals.

Trunk House: A Tree House on the Ground

This may not be a tree house in the traditional sense, hanging high above the ground, but it’s a tree house all the same. Paul Morgan Architects created the distinctive Trunk House with wood found on the owners’ Australian property that was naturally split into Y-shapes. Integrating these into the exterior of the house makes it look as if it were built from standing trees.

Alnwick Gardens

In the gardens adjacent to the Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England, one of the world’s largest and most complex tree houses can be found. The treehouse complex measures 6,000 square feet and includes a restaurant, an education room and rope bridges. The treehouse was made from sustainably-sourced Canadian cedar, Scandinavian redwood and English and Scots pine.

Naturally Curved Tree Homes by Roald Gunderson

Roald Gunderson builds beautiful eco-friendly homes using entire trees rather than milled wood, the curves of the branches giving each structure an entirely unique shape. Not only does this technique give the homes rustic charm, save money and put less strain on the environment than more conventional home-building methods, it also results in stronger houses. Gunderson chooses weak or invasive trees that wouldn’t normally be logged, and the natural curving structure of each whole branch is more structurally stable than that off milled timber.

Temple of the Blue Moon

Among the lodgings offered at Treehouse Point in Issaquah, Washington, Temple of the Blue Moon looks like a rustic cabin that has been elevated dozens of feet up a 300-year-old, 160-foot-tall Sitka Spruce tree. In addition to a rope bridge and a balcony, this treetop getaway features skylights and built-in cedar beds.

Nendo’s Tree House Apartment for Birds

This modern white tree house by Nendo doubles as a ‘bird apartment’, offering 78 individual nest boxes in the trees at Japan’s Ando Momofuku Center. The coolest thing about this particular tree house is the fact that humans can creep up the ladder and into the main part of the structure to get a look at each nest through peepholes.

6 High-Flying Rooms at AirHotel

At the Time Circus Airhotel in Belgium, you can choose from 6 different types of highly unconventional and fun high-flying hotel rooms. Made from recycled materials, Airhotel’s artistic tree houses each have their own theme, ranging from ‘love nests’ made of flowering branches to a sphere that looks like a lantern, but folds out into a flower shape. ‘El Ambassador’, the VIP room, looks like part of a steampunk airship with its wooden cocoon-like shape and glass skylights.

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